How to Think Without Thinking
by sparrowette
Summary: Reacting swiftly in odd situations is something Naruto has always been good at. But now Akatsuki is finally making a move, Naruto has a promise to keep and a promotion to earn, Karin insist he start procreating preferably yesterday and Jiraiya has left him alone again. You would think the Sannin would have learned something from the first time he did just that.
1. Chapter 1

AN: IMPORTANT! If you are a new reader, go read How to Win Friends, Influence People And Start Your Very Own Secret Ninja Organization first if you want this story and the actions of several characters to make any kind of sense.

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**Wherein Back Rooms Prove Useful and Naruto Is the Target of Several Plans**

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**001. Birth**

Kurama was born as the result of an act of violence. No, not _that_ way; when the Sage of Six Paths killed the Juubi by tearing it in nine pieces, every single piece then became a creature in his or her own right. Because Rikudō Sennin wasn't the type to kill people for fun and these juubilettes had in fact been innocent little children with no bleed-over memories from their "mother" – and he had made certain to check – he had taken them in as his children and cared for them since the day he died. It was too bad that the children of his blood managed to tear the happy family apart with rapid efficiency. This divide resulted first in two families and later in three. The Uchiha who believed power was the way to bring peace and the Senju who believed that love was the ultimate key to true, lasting peace.

And then there were the Uzumaki. The least branch they were called, the one that stayed out of the Best Way to Have Peace fight. They might have had something going there.

Karin was a child of the Uzumaki, but when she was born the name didn't carry much power, the clan having been ground into dust by those who feared its might. Karin was the daughter of a dead "mother" as well as the daughter of a dead mother named Komaki and she had resigned herself into being nothing more than that, for when a woman married she took her husband's name. There would be no more Uzumaki and so she had chosen to become an Uchiha instead; she could almost feel like she was reviving her own clan by helping Sasuke-kun to revive his, and that he had saved her life and was frankly the anthropomorphic personification of fan service didn't hurt any. Then over the course of a few intense months she had learned she had a cousin still in the world of the living, one orange-wearing, strangely loud Jinchuuriki named Naruto, and she had even gotten to take the third option in the conflict of loyalties when Sasuke-kun was the one to defect first.

Uzumaki Karin didn't have to betray either her love or her blood and if she had been the religious type she would have fallen on her knees and praised her gods. As things were she put a henge upon herself, went into a bar and got absolutely shitfaced – never mind that these Konoha lily-livers were apparently sticks in the mud when it came to underage drinking – and then started to conspire setting Naruto up with some nice girl with ample chakra reserves and good child-bearing hips. She was going to resurrect both clan Uzumaki and Uchiha if it was the last thing she ever did.

Uzumaki Naruto should have been known as Namikaze Naruto, but this could never be. After the Nine Tails' attack Konoha's power had been at the lowest point ever since the village had been but a group of garrisons, a hospital and a tower surrounded by a hastily-erected palisade. In the world of the ninja where being an army killer wasn't as much an exception as it was a career path Namikaze Minato had still stood out and had Naruto been acknowledged as his, a cautious enemy would certainly have chosen to play it safe and cleansed him from the Konoha gene pool. Naruto was the son of a dead mother and father and the son of hate. Really, the way he was treated without as much as a word of explanation should have turned him into yet another dysfunctional child soldier and that he managed to avoid this fate said a lot of the tenacity of his sanity.

Naruto was the child of hate who was housing the Biju of Hate and all he wanted was for people to get along – and they would get along even if he had to beat the peace and love into their skulls one by one. By the time he turned fifteen his track record was second to none.

Naruto didn't know about Pein. Even Jiraiya had been unaware of the roots of his erstwhile student and Nagato hadn't felt the need to inform him. Maybe knowing would have changed something, maybe not, but in the end it was Salamander Hanzo's conspiracy with Shimura Danzo that revealed how strong the old blood in his veins was.

A terrorist for peace, two reasonably sane ninja and the mystical fox-shaped personification of hate; this was clan Uzumaki fifteen years after Kyuubi left Konoha in ruins. The fox might have protested the inclusion, but considerably less that it would have rued the Uchiha or the Senju.

**002. Enthusiasm**

The Godaime Hokage Senju Tsunade of the Sannin wanted to bang her head against something hard – or even better, make it both Haruno Sakura and Uzumaki Karin's heads for being two teenage idiots thinking with their ovaries since their brains had clearly been taken over by bad bodice ripper novels and Uchiha Sasuke's for being such a social retard he couldn't even make a pick and put everyone out of the misery.

Not that she knew what bad bodice ripper novels were like and she was ready to hurt anyone who implied anything to the contrary. Ahem.

"Hokage-sama, please," Sakura pleaded, crushing a scroll against her chest like she wanted to strangle it. "I train with you and I train with Kabuto-sensei…" Tsunade suppressed a twitch at this. She couldn't understand _why_ Sakura felt the need to study with the man. While Kabuto was undeniably skilled and strong and had actually rather good teaching skills as well, unlike some Konoha jounin who made spectacular shinobi, but rather subpar teachers, even the most generous assessing of him included phrases like "stable like a whirligig" and "I swear he has been trained to fool us, but I can't prove it" and "holyshitthatwasdisturbing." Her administration had assured her that the last mentioned was in fact a real word now and completely appropriate to use in a psych evaluation. She had decided to let them have this little victory; if black humour was needed to not go over the edge when dragging others back from it, so be it, she could deal with reports she wouldn't have wanted her fellow kages to get their hands in for more than one reason.

"I do my hospital shifts, I do my paperwork duty that should actually be your duty by the way and my family has informed me that I'm to have social life whether or not I want one and that telling them I'm a legal adult now won't work until I'm eighteen. And that _female canine_ Karin has nothing but free time!" Sakura continued her complaints. That Karin used this free time to follow Sasuke around like lost, fluffy immature female canine went unsaid, but not unheard.

It was an exaggeration, but not one without some basis in reality. Karin wasn't trusted yet with anything more important than C-rank missions and hospital volunteer duty and when she was in the village this did in fact leave her with more free hours per day than Sakura had in whole week.

"Surely it isn't that bad," Tsunade reasoned with her student. "You might not have as much time with your team as you used to, but just last week you – or was that the week before? Anyway, you met with your teammate. Although it was to clean up that mess…" She was actually wincing now. Really, she should have learned already to shut up and dismiss people when she was still ahead.

"Was that when Sai decided to practice his people skills by converting Ino and Inoichi-san took umbrage with the cult initiation involving kissing with tongue or when Kakashi-sensei somehow manipulated Gai-sensei into challenging him into an infiltration mission in the hot springs?" Sakura asked.

"I meant the occasion when you had tea with Sasuke after Lee managed to challenge him into a fight for your hand," Tsunade explained, more than a little perplexed. She would have thought that such a duel would have been the high point of Sakura's young life, never mind that Sasuke had for all appearances fought more to shut Lee up than to whisk Sakura away into the clan compound.

"Sasuke fought for my hand and I missed it?" Sakura shrieked, her eyes bloodshot and her pupils tiny pinpricks that made her appear like a madwoman or a drug addict.

"Uh, Sakura, you were there for it. You even went to have tea with Sasuke afterwards," Tsudane reminded her gently. Calling it a hostage crisis in a tea house might have been more accurate than calling it a romantic encounter, but Sasuke hadn't escaped through the window so he might have been softening to Sakura. A little. Maybe.

"I have had tea?" Sakura asked as though the beverage was an obscure word in the dictionary she might have heard once upon a time many years ago…

So maybe Sasuke had thought co-operating to be the better part of valour for once in his life. So maybe Tsunade was working the girl a little hard; she really had thought that Sakura would have dropped Kabuto's lessons a long time before things got to this point, but clearly her, theirs, student was determined to do what both of them demanded even if it was beginning to look like she might be the one fail the next psych evaluation. And since even Kabuto had so far passed that low bar it would indicate a sad state of mind indeed.

"All right, fine, I will send Karin to bond with Naruto and I could make Shisune take over the filing," she conceded with a sigh. It wasn't as if they could tear the girl off her Sasuke-kun with a crowbar so as long as the Uchiha remained loyal she should be trustworthy as well. That Naruto would be tickled pink to bond with a real blood relative would be a bonus. She picked a cup of tea from her desk and lifted it to her lips. Ah, a little jasmine and ginger and a generous helping of sake hit just the spot.

"Tsunade-shishou, thank you!" Sakura climbed on the desk and kicking a stack of files off it in the process, her eyes shining with the feverish delight of the well and truly sleep deprived. "Let me have your baby! Modern medicine could make it happen, Kabuto-sensei says so!"

Tsunade spat mouthful of tea all over her papers.

**003. Love**

Uzumaki Karin didn't love many people in the world. She loved Sasuke-kun who had once been the symbol of her doomed wish to revive her clan, who had become her saviour and later her friend in his own strange way. Sasuke was never judgmental, never demanded anything she didn't feel she could give and certainly never demanded she should remain in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant though there were undoubtedly important in the village who saw wet dreams of a whole litter of Sharingan users. She loved her distant cousin in a distant sort of way as she had never even had a real conversation with Naruto. What she could gleam from the comments of the people who knew him, Naruto was an easy-going person with insanely good luck when it came to defying all logic and laws of nature and tendency to get into odd situations, like creating a new religion. She was certain she could truly come to love Naruto once she met him.

"Assisting your own blood should be a mission you would gladly overtake," Kabuto said, leaning back on his chair. _You would better_, his gaze said.

It was one of those popular bars where single people went when they wanted to leave with another who was lonely. The back room was actually the workers' break room, but as this was a week night with only one worker and a lot of regular patrons, no-one was going to happen in on their conversation. It was a hovel with a threadbare space in the rug, a vacant plot where a plant might once have been set and half-a-dozen hairpins, those discreet, indistinguishable friends of all women with a lot of hair and a need to keep it out of their face, forgotten on the counter probably a long time ago. Because it was the backroom of a civillian bar getting there unnoticed hadn't been any chore at all.

Only total rank amateurs had those highly conspicuous secret meetings the Icha Icha Infiltration series featured. Anyone who knew what they were doing picked a place like this, especially since the tunnels below Konoha had seen more ANBU patrols than the rest of the village put together ever since the second disbanding of the Root.

"What makes you think I will see him anytime soon? So far the authorities have kept me far away just in case I might abscond with him and run to Orochimaru." These words made her mouth twist into a churlish sneer. Orochimaru was certainly very good at inflicting curious psychological damage upon people – for that it had to be – that turned them slavishly loyal even when they had the reason to be anything but. After the first six months free from his influence Karin didn't know what she had been thinking anymore. She could remember the lines of her rationalizations, but what emotional forces had driven her were a mystery she thought best left untouched.

"My sources don't matter here. What matters is that you are technically speaking still a genin, aren't you?" Kabuto asked.

There was no love lost between Karin and Yakushi Kabuto. The young genius had never done anything to her per say, but he was brilliant in the same way a broken crystal was; full of rainbows, yet made of sharp edges and deep cracks and a tender touch would leave you bleeding. Still, he was one of the few people in Konoha she could trust to always be in Naruto's corner. He might very well be the one person in the village who would always keep Naruto as their top priority over such people-trampling concerns as "national security" and that S-class stamp that haunted Naruto's steps like the ghost of a fire brand. She could respect that.

"Yes, for all that I could kick some of their jounins' asses," Karin drawled. Not many of the jounins, granted, but if it happened to be a good match up, well, Orochimaru never abided by slouches who couldn't take advantage.

"My sources indicate that Jiraiya of the Sannin will soon be forced to leave Naruto-sama behind for a little while. The next Chuunin Exams will be held in Suna in three weeks' time." Kabuto's bead-eyes riveted Karin where she stood. "That Naruto-sama remains a genin at his strength and skill level is ridiculous and speaks of the laziness of imagination and disdain of his character as much as it is a matter of security. Jiraiya thinks to divert interest away from him by keeping him at low rank when the truth is that obscurity has long since ceased to be an option, Naruto-sama has never _not been_ in danger and has never fallen short of the challenge and keeping him a genin is an insult at this point, plain and simple. You can only leave in the company of a jounin. If I arrange for there to be one another genin, will you support Naruto in the exams?"

"And how precisely can you arrange these things?" she asked with curiosity and a little envy. If there was one person in the village even less trusted than she, it was Kabuto, and since she couldn't even squeeze a nice B-class mission from the mission office…

"Ah ha, it's a little embarrassing, but I have a key to several closets with skeletons in them," Kabuto said in a sheepish manner and rubbed his head. Karin had to suppress a tremor going up and down her back. No-one that messed up should be allowed to appear so innocent like a switch had gotten flipped in their head.

"How come you are even alive anymore?" she asked with reluctant admiration. Kabuto tilted his head a little and gave her a soulful, gently confused look, and damn if the creepy factor didn't just go up.

But slowly, very slowly Karin's frozen, polite smile turned toothy. So she would get to ditch that annoying career genin stigma and negate the advantage Princess Pretty in Pink had gained over her, and Naruto would get the promotion he deserved as well? And wasn't the new Kazekage supposed to really, really like Naruto and have a strong, attractive sister of the non-fangirl variety? She held no love for Kabuto, but the person who loved the person you loved was…

"This I believe is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

**004. Hate**

A deceptively small little shop-front belied what awaited on the inside. The interior looked like a normal little tea house, though the walls and doors were sturdy wood rather than delicate paper. There was a narrow doorway with a plaque that read Employees' Lavatory and indeed there was a lavatory behind the door, but there was also another door that read Broom Closet. There were no brooms behind it.

There were wall-hangings in the room made of darkly-dyed cloth with intricate golden and silver patterns woven throughout, shaped like flowers and birds. There was a low table with a Buddha statue and a lucky three-legged toad, surrounded by decadent pillows, and there was a bird cage full of canaries and tall plotted plants. This was one of Konan's little hide-outs and it always reminded Pein of a distant childhood period they had spent travelling with a circus until it was destroyed in an ambush because it was thought to smuggle foreign spies into the country, just a few months prior to their first meeting with Jiraiya of the Sannin. He never asked, but he thought that Konan surrounded herself with the resplendent regalia because it made her feel at home.

For him there was only the memory of a loss to be had. Pein hated suffering, he hated war, he hated the cruel shape of the cultures of the Elementary Continent had taken, the shape of an explosion and a knife to the back. It was the most important tenet of any and every religion there was if Jashinism didn't count: Do Not Kill. It shouldn't be that tall an order, right?

Of course it was. The shinobi killed and killed more, devoured until they were in turn devoured by the bloody tide and the chains of hate were passed down another generation.

"The Water and Lightning Country daimyo have both declared Narutoism forbidden as an act of treachery," Konan explained her findings. "Because of the pressure their Hidden Villages are exerting, no doubt. Mostly this has had the effect of making people curious about what is so terrible about a religion which' most notable aspect is to revere people who shield the world from demons. There have been strikes against worshippers, but because the villages can't really spare the manpower and the civillian authorities have more important things to worry about, they have been rare and sporadic enough that they ignite more anger and recalcitrance than fear."

"I see," Pein said. Konan looked expecting and he wondered what she expected him to say.

Uzumaki Naruto had proved to be a good person despite his unfortunate career choice - and he was Pein's distant cousin as well, though nepotism should never become an angle in a conversation like this at all - and he had apparently convinced the Godaime Kazekage of his pacifist point of view and there were even whispers of Killer B having some connection to the cult. Naruto was combating hate and war in his own way. It was as imperfect as the humankind as a whole.

The way Pein intended to combat hate and war would see Naruto, Gaara and Killer B all dead in a slow and agonizing way.

"I believe we might have to change our schedule a little. We intended to take Uzumaki the last, but he is the one whose power is growing at the most alarming rate. If we wait, he might be too strong to take alive." His sources in Konoha back when Danzo had still been alive - and at least one of the man's underlings had taken a leaf from his book when it came to surreptitious dealings with foreign powers - had informed him that if jinchuuriki Uzumaki was to die, his Shinigami-powered seal would take Kyuubi with him. With the other jinchuuriki the death of the host would have been naught but a slight setback, but Uzumaki had to be taken alive. There would be no second chance if the first attempt exploded on their faces.

"I am certain that Uchiha will prove capable of the task," Konan said with the slightest curve to her mouth that spoke of distaste to those who knew her well. These days this meant only Pein. "But wouldn't you indulge me just a little? Go with Uchiha and Hoshigaki and meet Uzumaki yourself. If you owe your family nothing else, you at least owe him that."

Pein wondered about it, the look in Konan's eyes. The last time he had seen that shine, the smile that went deeper than just the facial muscles, had been when they had been young and foolish to believe that a foreign jounin who took pity on a group of pity and taught them a little self-defense could shelter them from the big, bad world. They had learned better, of course. No-one could be relied upon to haunt your footsteps forever and come to your rescue when the hour was the darkest, no matter how strong you thought yourself, there was always a bigger fish in another pond - if the two of them didn't take this chance things would continue as they always had.

"Konan. Remember Yahiko, we must be strong for him." Yahiko was dead and he wasn't quite deluded enough to believe that Madara could bring his friend back, but he could see to it that the future Yahikos didn't have to suffer like theirs had, that no orphans would be left crying in the rain.

"I think I remember him better than you do, Nagato. I don't ask for much, but at least meet with Uzumaki Naruto once." There were red splotches burning on Konan's cheeks and Pein felt confused. He would know if she had ever met with the boy and so he couldn't understand what her investment with the boy was, for it was obvious that she had one. This world was one of hate and suffering and must be abandoned so that they might found a better one. Or, like the ninja would put it: die and be happy, for you shall be reborn.

Except no-one would be reborn, but if those who would be fortunate enough to be born only after the great change would be happy, it all would be worth it. Weren't all societies built on the bones of their precursors?

"I will see him," Pein promised easily. It wasn't as though that would change anything.

**005. Triumph**

Naruto was sitting on the porch of the house he was staying with Jiraiya-sensei in the little village of Aoyama and happily munched on the bowl of rice he had been given by one of his worshippers. He still thought that the whole Saviour of Us All deal (complete with capital letters for the gravity of the situation) was dead embarrassing and it made him feel like a total poser, but at least people felt like they could come to him with their problems and he was happy to help them. If they would just start giving him ramen afterwards rather than rice then he would be happy, but it wasn't like he could complain about the free food being wrong kind of free food. That would be crass.

"I can't take you anywhere these days," Jiraiya said and lifted his hand to his brow dramatically. Naruto recognized the shape of the jest at least id not necessary what it was about. Just the other day Jiraiya-sensei had cracked a just about bowmen being quick to reload and while Naruto had understood that it was dirty and, yes, it referred to _that_, he honestly didn't know why Ero-sensei had expected him to laugh. It hadn't been funny at all and some times Naruto felt like all that was required to call something humour was reference to genitals or sex. What was he, a kindergartner? And okay, he had glued Ero-sensei's underwear to the ceiling in that last inn they had stayed at, but that had been totally deserved. A saint would have been driven to the same.

And he should know. He was a saint these days, a fact he was sure was still giving Tsunade-baachan conniption fits when there was nothing else to get angry over.

"You can leave me behind. If this new informant is a geisha, please leave me behind," he pleaded. Naruto didn't have anything against the geisha or other lower-class prostitutes, quite the opposite. Many of them were great people who had just gotten into a sucky situation in his opinion. It was the way Jiraiya-sensei behaved that made him want to sink through the floor and pretend he didn't know the old perv.

Seriously, if there was a jutsu that would let a guy sink through the earth, there should also be one that would let him sink through wooden floor boards. He intended to learn it one day and then he wouldn't have to ever be embarrassed ever again!

"This place should be safe enough to leave you for a while, but then, I thought that the last time too and look where that got me?" Jiraiya spread his arms and gave that sarcastic smile that told Naruto it was a rhetoric question and he wasn't supposed to answer.

"Tsunade-baachan used you as a punching bag for letting me out myself as a jinchuuriki and found a religion," he was happy to not indulge. "But that was two years ago. It isn't like I'm going to get another!" he protested.

"It isn't as though you have elementally changed during these two years and I wouldn't put a second religion past you," Jiraiya-sensei said and glared at him, setting his hands on his hips like a woman would. Naruto had learned this to be the tell-tale indication that Jiraiya had in fact pretended to be a woman earlier that day, but sadly Ero-sennin had gotten a lot better at avoiding Naruto's attempts to collect blackmail material.

"Can you go for four weeks without saving a kitten from a tree?" sensei asked him. "Or starting another secret organization?"

"It's not particularly secret anymore," Naruto noted happily. Jiraiya grinded his teeth together in frustration.

"That doesn't make it any better! No. More. Organizations." He looked as serious as Naruto had rarely seen him; the last time had been when Jiraiya returned to Makimura and the time before that had been when Itachi had tried to abduct him. He considered the pros and cons of mentioning that the Satou Corporation was mostly a civilian organization, even though most of its employees knew at least a few jutsu and a little martial arts, and just decided not to.

"I can go for four weeks without founding a religion if left to my own devices," he promised. He didn't really have the track record to back this claim up, but it couldn't be that difficult, right?

"I guess I must live with that," Jiraiya-sensei muttered and opened a jar of sake. Naruto instantly brightened, which earned him a glare, but really, lowered expectations were a thing of beauty. If Jiraiyan-sensei had to go earn his pay as the spy master for once and leave his highly noticeable _accidental_, and that _accidental_ couldn't be stressed enough, religion founder behind, all the better for Naruto to save the next fish monger's beautiful daughter from marrying the local petty crime lord without complaints about flashy jutsu and a mayor's wife's clotheshorse being turned into improvised manacles.

Aoyama was an idyllic little place. It was a satoyama, a village where hills separating the Grass from the Waterfall Country gave way to plains. It had gently sloping rice paddy fields, a lot of clear streams and carp ponds, grasslands and even bamboo forests. The houses were like from a children's picture book, beautiful and old-fashioned. The small clinic where they were staying was the only building with electricity there and Naruto had a feeling that Jiraiya was going to leave him in Aoyama because he didn't trust Naruto with a big place like Makimura anymore, but he didn't really mind. Makimura had been a fun place, but also kind of tiring. Here he would have time to practice the cool water dragon jutsu Taiki had taught him the last time he had acted as Jiraiya's courier - in secret in the bamboo forest, of course. There was a ramen stand too and hot springs and there would be no Jiraiya being a pervert. He was going to enjoy his peaceful holiday.

This was after Naruto and Jiraiya in the Grass Country after they had to leave after the Waterfall Country in a hurry, yet in triumph over another yakuza family who had decided to be vile in the front of the wrongest person. This was Naruto who thought that for once in his life everything went his way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wherein There Is a Lot of Foodstuff (And Only One Is Explosive)**

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**6. Feel**

Naruto was bored. This fact alone would have made many otherwise imperturbable Konoha jounin flinch if uttered out loud and many ANBU members whose sense of humour otherwise leaned towards the black and morbid kind suppress snickers. Even now the rumours of Naruto's second year in the Academy and especially the Great Prank with Feathers, Sequins, the Hokage's Hat and the Rubber Chicken circulated, growing with skillful narration until the story much eclipsed the hilarity of the prank itself.

(That Sandaime had allowed and secretly even enabled these pranks was a truth he had taken to the grave with him. The ANBU tended to both be unstable and avoid the councellors assigned to them like the plague and anything that made them laugh and wasn't a human being bleeding his life out had been worth a little embarrassment in his opinion.)

But Naruto was bored, Jiraiya-sensei wasn't there for him to bother for a new technique and in a lucky coincidence there was a ramen bar near the clinic where Naruto was staying. It was a little place with only one room and a handful of small tables, but the ramen smelled almost as good as the Ichiraku's. The place was empty when Naruto came and the woman standing behind the counter was reading a knitting magazine, appearing thoroughly bored.

"Hey, where is everyone?" he shouted form the door. The village was fairly bustling that day with people running around with heavy-looking loads and parcels, moving carts and huge bundles of colourful fabric that were probably tents and otherwise looking like they were preparing for a festival of some sort. And when a festival approached it always meant busy time for restaurants, bars and stands of all sort in Naruto's experience.

"Haven't you heard?" the woman asked as she put the magazine down and put a professional smile on her face. "The Daimyo's uncle has decided to pay his respects to the kami of our shrine again! If only he might give us a little more time to prepare for these visits..." the woman's voice trailed down as she clearly felt uneasy at expressing displeasure with a noble of such high standing.

"What is the daimyo's uncle doing here? I mean, it's a nice village and all, but usually the nobles stay in the big cities," Naruto asked. He had of course never met the Grass Country Daimyo's uncle, but he had seen the Fire Daimyo's nephew at a distance once when he had visited the capital with Jiraiya and the man hadn't looked like he would go to a place where he might risk stepping into a mud puddle or on a cow dung if someone threatened him with a jutsu. From what he had understood those airs were very common among the old noble class that had long since lost their warrior status to the ninja and so clung to the civilized poetry-reading, flower-arranging tea connoisseur aspects with bloody-minded tenacity.

"Ah, I have heard that the Honourable Uncle is a little, um, eccentric," the woman said and eyed around like he expected someone to be crouching under a table, ready to report her words to said Honourable Uncle. Naruto cheerfully replaced "eccentric" with "totally nuts" in his mind.

"The Honourable Uncle is a great believer of astrology. He commissioned the Court Astrologer to deduce which of the shrines of the Grass Country would be the most auspicious for him to pay his respects to the gods. He was born in the year of Yang Water Horse, you see. The astrologer deduced that the year our shrine was founded and that the altar is in the western area of the shrine makes it the most suitable for him. What would you like to have?" the woman ended his explanation asking.

"Pork ramen with an egg, please. I'm sorry, I don't know what's your name. I'm Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto introduced himself; he just didn't feel right calling the "the woman" in his head. "And why it is so important that the altar is in the western part anyway?" He didn't know anything about astrology since the shinobi weren't the superstitious sort as a rule. They didn't live in the world of presentiments and I-just-feel-it, but cold, hard facts. Naruto of course thought that some things couldn't be rationalized and cost-estimated and needed to be felt, the positions of stars weren't on his list of concerns.

"I am Suzuki, it's nice to meet you, Uzumaki-san," she said and it was clear from her expression that having a family name had pushed him up the ladder in her estimation – and that she at least hadn't ever heard of Narutoism.

"The eastern area of a building is an unlucky area in the year of the Yang Water Horse, the southern area isn't lucky either and the northern area won't generate the career and money luck. There is a money star in the southeast area and the southwest area can make people smarter, but the west is the most auspicious direction," was Suzuki's answer. The whole thing felt totally absurd to Naruto, but if it brought a noble and some business to the village, good for the villagers.

"So he cares about career and money luck?" he asked as Suzuki turned towards the stove just to say something.

"You truly aren't from Grass Country at all, are you?" she asked with good humour. "The Honourable Uncle is only starting his career so it is a pressing concern for him. You see, our Daimyo-sama's grandfather re-married at a very old age. The Honourable Uncle is only seventeen years old."

The Honourable Uncle? Naruto's first thought was: and Konohamaru thinks he has got it hard!

**7. Wrecked**

Arai Isamu of the Takigakure no Sato was a good jounin. Ninjutsu and intelligence gathering were his strongest suit and he was no slouch at taijutsu either. He didn't have much talent for creating genjutsu, but he could break most A-class techniques and anything below that. In addition to this he was actually a good teacher as well – knowing how to do something was no guarantee one could teach _others_ how to do it – and he thrived as a jounin sensei, teaching his village's next generation.

He was currently running through a bamboo forest for his life and simultaneously trying to buy his genin the time to save their lives, if only the accursed brats would _obey him_ and get away!

"If I have told you twice, I have told you a hundred times! Run!" he shouted and turned to face his pursuer again.

"Our jounin-sensei taught us all we need to know about arithmetics," Ohno Maaya said at his back, and where were the running steps disappearing into the distance? He wasn't hearing any.

"If she doesn't kill you, I will do it myself," he growled. Where was the madwoman pursuing them? She should have been here already and that she wasn't in sight did absolutely nothing to reassure Isamu.

"Our jounin-sensei taught us all we need to know about anticipation - or maybe it should be something about Karma in this case? I teach you to defend your life so I can end it sort of thing," Musume said piped in, her voice shaking, but still determined.

"Everybody thinks they are a comedic these days. I am not only your teacher, but also your commander!" he raised his voice in the hopes that the unusual tone would shake them up a bit, make them realize how dire the situation was.

"Our sensei can write us up on charges of insubordination when the fight is over, and I'm pretty sure that definition of Karma only applies to Jashinism." And this was Ando Kazuo completing the set. The set that was refusing to leave, damn it.

"So touching. This would be a lot easier on all of us if you would just answer a few, meager questions about a demon woman you can't possibly regard as anything but a threat, this would," an almost bored voice interrupted them - and it came behind their backs! Isamu turned around so fast he could feel whiplash to look at the dark-haired woman wearing a top of bandages. She was holding kunai casually against Maaya's throat in the classic back-to-chest hostage position. Maaya was breathing shallowly, quickly, but her lips were pressed into thin, white line of determination and Isamu cursed silently. She would do something stupid if he didn't do it first.

Isamu didn't know his enemy, though he of course knew of her. She had often used the names Haruka, Ikumi and Iyona and the I&T department was still arguing on whether or not any of these was her real name. She claimed to be a missing-nin's daughter and they had three likely candidates from two villages, her skill set considered. But her origins weren't important, not now when it was clear that Haruka-Ikumi-Whoever was standing a step higher on the jounin ladder of power and skill - and it was an infuriatingly important step.

"Just give her up to me and all will be well, it will. Just tell me the safe house and all will be well, I will get my money and you will all get away, you will," the woman crooned and bent to lick the shell of Maaya's ear, the kunai moving a minuscule bit from the pale girl's throat. Just a minuscule bit, but it was enough. A fast replacement jutsu had a log in Haruka-Ikumi-Miss Nutcase's embrace and Maaya safely transported away, and Isamu didn't waste any time attacking.

"Dosei Haji no Jutsu!" he shouted as his fingers nimbly, rapidly flickered through the handseals and a rock fist burst out from beneath the woman's feet, but the woman was too quick, casually jumping over the clenched fingers of mud and hardened gravel, her hands flickering through a jutsu of her own. Tiger, ox, dog, rabbit, snake... oh shit.

"Daitoppa!"

The wind jutsu hit Isamu mid-leap with the power of a sledge-hammer being wielded by a rabid monkey summon. The force of the attack simply blew him across the small clearing and through a copse of tall bamboo stalks and eventually against a rock. He managed at the last second to twist his body so he didn't break his skull or back on impact, but a silvery-red streak of pain shot up his leg in breath-taking flash against his eyelids, accompanied by a sickening crunch. His suddenly limp body dropped to the hard ground with a thud.

Isamu had time to feel despair, to fear for his genin's life. He had time to conclude that even now he couldn't give Hoshino Fuu away to this bounty hunter. He didn't like his village's Jinchuuriki, didn't trust her, but Fuu was a Waterfall ninja just like he and as a resource much more valuable to the village than he and his little genin cell.

"Take this, bandage-woman!" a new voice called out. Isamu forced his eyes open just in time to see an orange flash at the corner of his mind, to see Haruka-Ikumi-Bandage Woman holding a cupcake with pink frosting and sprinkles in her hands, a bemused wrinkle appearing on the bridge of her nose. The orange-clad someone had arranged the sprinkles into the shape of a smiling face.

"Am I supposed to poison myself with this, am I?" she asked. "Make your job easier by taking myself out?"

Then the cupcake blew up.

**8. Soft**

The thing was, Ohno Maaya actually kind of liked Hoshino Fuu, a whole lot even. She knew that many people avoided Fuu because she was a Jinchuuriki and better safe than sorry, right? No-one thought - or at least admitted thinking - that she might do something on purpose, but when a huge monstrosity of chakra that only yearned to kill everyone was sealed inside a fragile human body with nothing more than a few lines of ink, well...

"Most people don't really understand sealing very well; to them it's just something that makes the exploding tags explode. As long as I don't weaken the chakra-mind barrier by channeling too often, I will be alright," Fuu had said, almost begged Maaya to believe with her strange, orange eyes.

Fuu who was her second cousin on her mother's side, Fuu who mixed her own blends of herbal tea in her spare time, Fuu who had sharpened, oiled and polished Maaya's sharp, pointy things for her when she had been in the hospital with the whooping cough because that was how she had learned to show friendship and then wholly failed to understand the innuendo thirteen-year-old Maaya had thrown at her. Fuu whose bizarre colouring put Konoha girls to shame. The same Fuu her sensei claimed she was stalker-fixated on, which made sensei a hypocrite in a really big glass house considering how he stalked the baker down the lane from the Town Hall, and the poor woman was even a civilian and couldn't see him following her around. Maaya was simply Fuu's best friend; it made her feel really special to know that she was someone's _only_ friend and guilty that she could feel happy over something so horrible.

Anyway, Maaya liked Fuu and because she liked Fuu she had looked up Narutoism, making up half-formed daydreams where she would meet Uzumaki Naruto and tell him to go meet Fuu and then they could be friends as well and she would still be special because she would have been the one to help Fuu meet the other Jinchuuriki.

When Ohno Maaya met Uzumaki Naruto for the first time he handed a cupcake to the woman who had tried to force her sensei to give up Fuu's safe house. Then the cupcake blew up. This wasn't something she had ever imagined.

"Why there was a smiling face on it?" was the first thing she could think to ask.

"I thought it would add insult to injury," Uzumaki said shamelessly. He had the kind of grin that probably would have softened the heart of a corpse suffering from rigor mortis. Maaya thought: he is going to be so good for Fuu.

"You gave me a cupcake bomb?" the bandaged woman complained with a voice that was for once more surly than shrill and superior She had managed to drop it and jump back a fraction of a second before it exploded, but her clothes were charred, her eyebrows gone and there were now bamboo splinters in her hair all the same. "Who does things like that?"

"Who attacks genin? Take on people in your own weight class!" Uzumaki fired back at the woman. "Well, I'm technically speaking a genin too, but feel free to attack me. I dare you." He cracked his knuckles menacingly and something shifted in the air around him. Maaya had never witnessed Fuu using her biju's chakra and she wondered if it would feel like this, like someone was dragging hot salt all over her chakra sense.

"No, I don't think so, I don't. Remember, little paragon, we are ninja, not samurai," the woman sighed and pouted before leaving in a swirl of bubbles. Uzumaki's fist hit the ground where the woman had stood less than half a second too late and the force of the impacts made the nearby bamboo's sway as though a fierce wind was bending them.

"I hate it when they do that," he growled and there was a hint of visible red around him before the burning chakra disappeared like it hadn't been there at all. "Never mind, that sort always comes back like a bad ryo. Let's take your sensei to the clinic, the doctor there is great, he'll take care of him. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, shinobi of Konoha and an ally, it's nice to meet you." He thrust out his hand towards Kazuo who was standing the nearest, but when he failed to take it she rushed in and grabbed it instead.

"I'm Ohno Maaya, would you please be friends with my cousin Fuu, Uzumaki-san?" she asked.

"Maaya!" her sensei shouted, trying to stand up and regretting it immediately if his pained hiss was anything to go by.

"Is she a nice person? And call me Naruto, Uzumaki-san makes me feel old," he said and offered her another blinding grin. She imagined him smiling to Fuu like that and Fuu looking startled and hopeful at the same time and felt all soft and gooey inside. Who said kunoichi had to be hardened anyway?

"She's really nice, I'm sure you will get along famously. You have so much in common too," Maaya said and ignored her sensei's half-growled protests.

**9. Cold**

Doctor Fujiki wasn't quite as good as a real medic nin would have been, but as one of Jiraiya's contacts he knew a little bit of chakra healing that would help to speed the Taki jounin's recovery along and he had a good medicines stockpile. Besides, he was properly scary which surely meant that he knew his stuff. Naruto was currently trying to explain this to the three genin who were sitting nervously around the table while their sensei was being operated in the other room.

"He's only the good kind of scary, the kind that drags you out by the hair if you try to enter the doctor's office in dirty clothes that are going to contaminate it with bacteria, _you imbecile, are you trying to get everyone who's not immune to everything and the pox killed_, and if you get hurt doing something stupid they are going to hit you over the head and shout at you a lot. And the good kind doesn't have the patience for stupid things in general so it's best to be really good at dodging around them. Doctor Fujuki is really almost like a real medic-nin." His aim was really poor when compared to Tsunade's and he couldn't send people through the walls with playful finger flicks, but he was a civilian so Naruto didn't hold that against him.

Now the kids were giving him funny looks. What gave?

"That's what good doctors are like in Konoha?" the red-haired girl named Musume asked. "Is sensei even going to survive this?"

"Don't worry, protecting your genin from missing-nin is a universally good reason to get hospitalized," Naruto reassured him. Even Tsunade at her most ornery would give but a sniff and then proceed to do her absolutely very best in a situation like this even if the other guy had been someone like Itachi.

"If that's the good kind of scary, then what the bad kind of scary is like?" the boy asked, looking at him all wide-eyed. Really, what kind of medic-nin did they have in Taki anyway?

"Orochimaru," he said. If there was one thing the snake bastard was good for, it was being his own descriptor. Now everyone shuddered.

"Isamu-sensei told us that in the last war the enemy hated going after the medics the most when they fought Konoha," Maaya said with contemplative voice. "Does it have any battle applications?"

"Any good medic-nin can make a heart go asplode, and they are often good with poisons too," Naruto bragged.

"Stop making my patient nervous and go buy us some food! I refuse to cook for this many freeloaders," Doctor Fujiki's voice sounded through the door, making the three genin jump. But Naruto knew he wasn't really angry from his tone - Doctor Fujiki liked it when people said he was scary and evil and probably raised the dead in his basement with heathen rituals. So he just shouted his agreement and started running towards the ramen bar. Hey, if the doctor hadn't wanted ramen, he should have specified something else!

But he didn't have the time to even reach the half-way point when he saw Suzuki walking towards him, carrying a load of take-away containers on her arms. He could smell delicious, spicy broth and pork and chicken there and something that was probably grilled bamboo. It was enough to make his mouth water.

"Oh, good, they let you out," Suzuki whispered and gave Naruto the four containers. It would make a small meal for six, but they would have to manage. "I was sent to see if those terrible shinobi were holding you and the good doctor hostage. If something is wrong, just slip me a word now and the priest will talk with the Honourable Uncle when he arrives tomorrow. He will extend his protection to you as long as you are in the village." She was looking around in a way that was probably supposed to be sneaky to see if Naruto had been followed. He only now realized that he was given looks by many people.

He really should have realized sooner, but even now he was just expecting looks of pity and deep-simmering anger, he guessed, it was that stupid, ingrained de-sensitization that had prevented him from noticing the anger wasn't directed at him at all.

"Uh, no, we aren't! Their sensei just got hurt fighting some crazy missing-nin. It's probably a good idea to tell Uncle-sama about that because that sorts always starts trouble and I think she's going to hang around nearby. Besides, if they start something back at the clinic, I can protect the doctor," he promised. If the missing-nin who had beaten Isamu that badly had just run away at the sight of him, Isamu couldn't be that tough an opponent himself, but Naruto didn't think it would come to blows. He had been to Taki with his genin team once and they had seemed like nice people.

Suzuki begun coughing and Naruto thought he could hear "Uncle-sama" along the wheezing. It hadn't been such an odd thing to say, had it? Tsunade-baachan would probably drop of her chair from shock if he called her anything as respectful as Baa-sama – and then strip search him for mind control seals.

"Uzumaki-san, please don't do anything foolish. I know that you are a strong young man, what with you helping to get Masayo's cart off that ditch, but these are shinobi. They can be real monsters if angered," Suzuki pleaded while wringing her apron's hem in her hands and Naruto realized with a start that she didn't know he was a shinobi as well. But Ero-sensei hadn't said anything about keeping that a secret, he wouldn't have lifted that cart off the ditch otherwise... Who was he fooling? He would have, but he would have made and henged some shadow clones to make it look more normal.

"I can be creepy too, you know. Don't you think it's scary when I order chicken ramen with an egg on it?" he whispered with confidential voice. Naruto thought it was creepy and that's why he hadn't eaten any chicken ramen lately. Not quite Orochimaru levels of creepy, granted, but it definitely hit the rolling-back-your-eyes-are-you-even-going-to-be-able-to-roll-them-back levels.

He was only adding the eggs in the first place because Iruka-sensei had sent him a letter where he reminded Naruto to make certain he received the necessary levels of protein and cholin for a growing shinobi.

"Um, no? Why adding eggs would be creepy?" Suzuki asked, but at least she had stopped trying to pull her apron apart with her bare hands.

"But isn't that like eating a newborn in a soup made of its mother?" Naruto rolled his eyes wildly and made his best demented face.

Suzuki burst out laughing, first in half-suppressed giggles that quickly got out of control and matured into very un-ladylike snorts. She bent in half and pressed her arms against her stomach, tears and a little snot running down her face.

"Thank you, Naruto-kun, I needed that. You really are a good boy," she said once she had enough breath to do so and ruffled Naruto's hair. It still surprised him sometimes when people just touched him like that for no reason. "But please don't try anything, your - ah-ha, diet of evil chicken-ramen aside, you clearly don't have it in you to be a ninja."

Well, that was just cold. And to add the insult to his injury the ramen was cold too when he got back to the clinic.

**10. Without**

Yamato had been the one to grow the trees they were standing below after the Chuunin Exam Siege was over and the reparations of the village begun. They were lush and strong and their trunks still straight, artificially grown into perfection no natural tree reaching such height would retain. He had always liked these quiet little groves hidden in the village's empty niches, the gentle green canopies rustling above and spreading over the little people like comforting blankets, and while this particularly one didn't feel as real as the old one, he knew that it was just a matter of time.

Under the trees that had sprouted at his command at Konoha's gate he gazed upon his new team. Uzumaki Karin, formerly of Sound, now a genin with the skills equaling those of a tokubetsu jounin, was standing with her hands at her hips and her head thrown back a little so that she could look him into the eye.

"What are we waiting for? I want to arrive to Suna with time to spare and that trip to Grass isn't helping any," she declared haughtily.

Hyuuga Hinata, stood next to Karin and twiddled with her thumbs, a slight blush to her cheeks. She already appeared to be short of breath and Yamato couldn't help but wonder what would happen when the girl actually saw Naruto. Still, she was reputed to be quite skilled and... Wasn't she supposed to be promoted already?

"Didn't you get your promotion after that mission to the Earth Country, Hinata?" he asked. A field promotion was a bit of a rarity during the peacetime, mostly out of desire to keep that peace with foreign powers; it was rare that a powerful, skilled opponent wasn't a member of another village and some ninja might claim to have no feelings, but their pride still bruised laughably easily. The Hyuuga still managed to claim promotion this way fairly regularly.

"N-not yet. My father was pushing it through, but then the opportunity arose." She blushed even brighter at this and Yamato was forced if she was really that innocent and bashful or just that dirty-minded. He knew that the Hyuuga saw chakra coils with their eyes, not bare skin under the clothes like the stubborn urban legends claimed, but sometimes he wondered about the whole clan. The basic psychological theories he had been taught while in ANBU all suggested that the level of repressed behaviour the Hyuuga clan displayed often hid deep, dark waters. No-one could be that dignified and decorous every waking moment and stay sane. Something had to give.

He had Orochimaru-trained Uzumaki and a bloodline heiress in addition to the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki. The numbers of the final round contestants varied a little depending on the village holding the exams, but as a rule out of over a hundred chuunin-hopefuls less than ten would even have their chance at the final round. Often the new chuunin could be counted with one hand's digits and fingers would be left over.

"So much for foreign good-will," Yamato said. This year no other village stood a chance.

He wondered why he was doing this for Kabuto anyway. Not that he had anything against Naruto, though there were still villagers who stubbornly did, and he certainly had nothing against Hinata who showed much too sweet demeanor to be a kunoichi if anything. Even Karin who could be abrasive on occasion if the rumours were correct wouldn't bother him much. If these three received a promotion, more power for them as far as Yamato was concerned. No, the reason he disliked this was because Kabuto was a stone-cold bastard, a former and possibly future traitor and one who habitually stuck his nose where it didn't belong. But, but, but.

As cold and amoral Kabuto was - in the true sense of amoral that he didn't understand morality at all - he was still capable of loving one person and that made him at least relatable. Yamato kept seeing himself in Kabuto, the person he might have become had Orochimaru not been caught, had not Sandaime wrestled him from Danzo's clutches. As irrational as it was, maybe this was some sort of survivor's guilt. And Kabuto in all likelihood knew that exactly; the way he was utterly incapable of understanding morality and canny at deciphering the irrationality it drove people into at the same time fascinated him in a morbid kind of way.

And the trees they were standing under shouldered their bit of blame as well. Yamato had to quit ANBU in order to be allowed to devote time to the rebuilding program and that had left him with the time to spare now that the rebuilding was over.

A man without morals manipulating a man without understanding into taking three genin into an exam where no other team had a chance. Now they only had to walk into a bar and the joke would be complete.


End file.
